


Reflected Identity

by Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Boba thinks about his past and his dna, Gen, Inspired by Fanart, boba introspection, drabble-like
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-09-15 09:50:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16931019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome/pseuds/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome
Summary: A younger Boba muses on his appearance and then... gives himself a hair cut. Based on incredible art by Ollikah





	Reflected Identity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ollikah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ollikah/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Boba with Funky Hair](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/439299) by Ollikah. 



> A huge thank you to Ollikah for their beautiful art, (seriously go follow them for all the clone trooper and boba goodness) and for letting me run with their drawing of Boba with a new hairstyle.

There’s a period of his life where he’s almost… happy. It’s a strange word for him to use, and if he catches himself thinking it, he corrects it to _appeased._ A much better one. Not as immobile and lazy as content, not as dangerous as satisfied. Other words like jovial or delighted are so far removed from his life they never even cross his thoughts, except on the pages of the holo-books he scans when he’s got nothing better to do.

His father would tell him there’s always something better to do.

His father, whose stern face looks back at Boba in every metallic surface on the ship. The ship that Jango had owned. 

Boba doesn't believe in ghosts, but he knows he's haunted. Not by reality, but by his DNA. By the whispering voice that told him he wasn't really a person, just a reflection of his father. His DNA bank, if he believed what that voice told him.

He didn't want to believe that voice. He wanted to believe he had a father. But he also wanted to be his own person. So, for a few years, Boba spends the time learning how to do just that. He lives his life according to his wishes, his desires. He hunts and fights and... reads.

He reads a lot.

Jango wasn’t much of a reader. He was more of a people person, despite also being, well, a person who killed people. But Boba, reflecting back on his past, could see how Jango’s energy came from others. It perhaps even influenced his style of hunt. He was happiest adding clues together from various meetings, worked just as well with Zam as he did alone. (until that last time. Boba doesn’t think of that time. Ever. Well. Except for in the few minutes a pretty face or gentle voice interests him, and then he reminds himself to care about someone is to risk having to kills someone you care about ), and had no problem chatting with clients.

On the other hand (well. It was the same hand. The same lines curving over his palm, the same slightly shorter than average pinkie finger. He’d heard of planets where the lines on your palm told your destiny. He thought the fact there were millions of men out there now, all of them with the same lines but not the same destiny, not at all, meant that, along with every other type of fortune telling, was bantha shit), Boba’s hunting style was more solitary.

He’d tried to build a crew. Had worked with Bossak, with the others, but it had always made him feel a little too jumpy, a little too outside-of-it-all even when they were inside his ship. He never knew what to say in the quiet moments when there wasn't a fight. Never knew how to answer questions of past or future or anything beyond the mission. Other people wanted to know that stuff.

And other people could be _exhausting._

That hadn’t changed from when he was a boy, and would hide from the loud, boisterous Cuy'val Dar, when they came to call in his father’s apartment. He had no idea how Jango could have talked to them all night, and then supervised training all day. But maybe it was the company of those others, no matter how much they seemed to annoy Jango, that kept him going. Because Boba certainly hadn't been good for conversation in his early years. Most of his first memories were asking  _What's this?_ and  _why_ and  _when you coming back, Papa?_

Boba is realizing things like that each day. Learning just how different he is from his father. It’s the differences that he oddly cherishes. Anything to make him feel like his own person, instead of the shadow of a ghost.

It’s that sort of thinking that led him to this exact moment, standing in the Slave I’s ‘fresher unit, staring at his reflection. His dark hair has gotten shaggy, oddly so, and it’s annoying to have it falling into his face when it’s not restrained by his helmet. Jango always kept his hair short. Most clones he’d seen followed suite. Knowing the Kaminoans, the clones were probably informed that the exact hairstyle Jango had was the most efficient, the best way possible of growing hair.

Boba didn’t believe Jango’s way was always best. Not anymore. Not with all he’d done, and all he’d learned. He didn't wear Jango's armor colors, or even keep his armor in the same glittering condition his father did. Boba thinks more about function than appearance. Better to be careful and calibrated with weapons than to be matchy-match with colors. Be precise where it matters. Forget the rest. Otherwise, those damn lines on the hand would tell the same story as his father's after all. He'd end up dead from overconfidence.

He's sworn to fix that trait in himself. To be precise, but not a perfectionist. That being said, he still needs a haircut.

So, carefully, as precisely as he did anything, he cut his hair. Shaves the sides short, and then, gives himself a dramatic swoop of longer hair on the top, hitting right above his eyes.

The end result is a little clumsy, a little odd, but for the first time, when he stares into the mirror, only one face looks back at him.

His own.


End file.
